Q. I read that Best Buy was selling a Vizio 55-inch OLED TV for $899. That’s incredible, but my question is whether the Vizio OLED TV is as good as the LG OLED TV. Is there a big difference in quality which is why the price is lower? — Steve, Marina Del Rey, California.
Steve, Best Buy yesterday did sell a Vizio 55-inch, 4K OLED TV for just $899, and a 65-inch OLED TV 4K for $1,499. The prices were good if you are a ‘My Best Buy’ member (you can sign up for free.). However, I have to inform you that the sale is over. The 55-inch model is now $1,299 at Best Buy while the 65-inch Vizio OLED now costs $1,799.
But those are still good prices for an OLED TV. LG normally charges a few hundred dollars more for comparably-sized OLED sets, although you can now get a 55-inch one for $1,196. (Link is an Amazon affiliate link; this site receives a small percentage of sales from Amazon links.)
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Still, the lower prices raises the question of whether a Vizio OLED TV is as good as LG’s OLEDs. (Sony also sells OLED TVs in the United States while Philips and Panasonic sell them in Europe.)
Reviewed.com, which reviews televisions and other electronics, thinks so. The site wrote this last month:
“In recent years, Vizio has earned its reputation as a trustworthy purveyor of both budget-friendly and top-tier TVs alike. Given the rise of OLED TVs and the critical acclaim of models from LG and Sony, it’s not surprising to see Vizio jump in. Like most OLED TVs we’ve tested over the years, Vizio’s first OLED TV is—somewhat predictably—a triumph of display technology. Perfect black levels, rich color reproduction, and silky-smooth motion handling are just some of the TV’s highlights, making it a clear competitor to LG’s most affordable OLED TV series, the BX.”
And Rtings.com, another electronics review site, had this to say about the Vizio 55-inch and 65-inch OLED models:
“The Vizio OLED 2020 is the first OLED TV Vizio has released and delivers impressive overall performance. Like any OLED TV, its ability to turn off individual pixels results in an infinite contrast ratio and perfect black uniformity. It displays an excellent color gamut for HDR content, but it doesn’t get very bright in HDR, and large areas get significantly dimmer. Most gamers should appreciate the 120Hz refresh rate, near-instant response time, and low input lag. It’s advertised to have variable refresh rate (VRR) support, but it doesn’t work at all and there’s screen tearing. The TV has a unique center-mounted stand that’s designed to hold the Vizio Elevate soundbar. Sadly, the screen has the risk of permanent burn-in, which is typical of OLEDs, and our unit has noticeable temporary image retention, but this may vary between units.”
Those are fairly impressive recommendations, which would suggest if the Vizio OLED price drops again to under $1,000, it would be a steal.
Steve, hope that helps. Happy viewing, and stay safe!
Have a question about new TV technologies? Send it to The TV Answer Man at swann@tvpredictions.com. Please include your first name and hometown in your message.
— Phillip Swann
All vizio tv are junk!! 4 tvs in five years, all had bad screens..
Read the negative comments from those buying this TV from Best Buy. This is exactly what to expect from this TV.
Then go to ratings.com and read their comparison of the Visio Oled to the LG 55 CXP.
The answer provided by tvanserwerman left out parts of the reviews it mentions.
This is not a good OLED. It comes with many flaws out of the box and some firmware updates worsen the problems. It also has features that don’t work.
I know. I bought this as a second set to an LG OLED. I returned it.
I had major issues getting video HDMI signal to appear from my Onkyo TX-RZ820. Vizio’s support rep. was not well-informed nor very helpful. I had to manually change the Vizio HDMI video input from “auto” to 1.4. I was able to get a picture but now cannot access any of the following picture settings that are all grayed-out: contrast, color, tint, sharpness and most disappointingly, motion control. This happens regardless of 1080p source, Blu-ray, cable or streaming. Not being able to calibrate a TV hooked up to a widely used mid-priced home theater receiver is a big problem. When I eventually get 4k content, I won’t be able to take full advantage of it with out-of-box settings.
LG is the only one that builds OLED TVs every one else buys the screens from them
I got a P-Series Vizio against my better judgement. Sure enough less than a year in my TV started to get stuttery and worse patches of shadow flash randomly. Sure enough the negative comments all mentioned this. I didn’t bother reading the negatives like I usually do due to the overwhelmingly positive rtings review and overall score.
No matter what features it has, it’s not worth it if it doesn’t last or has issues. Never again. Sony and Samsung only from here on out.
Bought one against my better judgement (P-Series) and didn’t last a year. Never again. Samsung and Sony from here on out only.
I picked it up.on Friday. So far it had to be unplugged and unplugged twice to start. And thus morning it failed to connect to wife and had to be rebooted twice. The screen is lovely. I had a Toshiba and my family loved the fire stick interface. I think I am going back to a Toshiba and returning it. Unplugging has me most concerned as it usually is a capacitor issue or motherboard. No way.
This TV has a luminance bug in which the TV defaults to a higher brightness every time you turn it on. If you watch in a dark room and want a lower luminance, you will have to go into picture settings and lower it every time. This is extremely annoying. It seems that Vizio is ignoring this issue. Business Insider did a review that mentions this glitch. They also stated that Vizio is aware of the issue. This problem is too big to ignore. That suggests that either Vizio does not know how to fix it or that any fix they have would introduce other problems. Since they have allowed this to go on almost five months, it’s not looking good. Their tech support plays dumb about this issue as well. I think we are on our own and I absolutely hate this luminance bug. Not acceptable for a flagship model and I will not buy Vizio ever again.